H&A gets new Neighbours on five

Home and Away’ss main rival, Neighbours, is to move to Five from 2008. The show has aired on the BBC since 1986, but when the rights to air the show went up for negotiation recently, a bidding war broke out between the BBC, ITV and Five. The BBC pulled out after refusing to pay extortionate prices for the show, accusing Neighbours’s production company Fremantlemedia of making an “unrealistic price demand”.

Five have been looking to acquire Neighbours for many years, and it’ss widely expected that they’sll create an “Aussie Hour”, airing Neighbours and Home and Away back to back, presumably from 5:30 until 6:30pm. This could have a positive effect on Home and Away’ss ratings, which are consistently lower than Neighbours’s in the UK.